Kanpai

Kanpai #42: 360 Scores a Hit in Japan

Thanks to Namco Bandai, Xbox 360 has been given a much-needed boost in this most difficult of territories.

Last week was one of those rare occasions when Microsoft Japan could be proud of Xbox 360's performance in the region, although this blip - which pushed 24,962 new console sales over a seven-day period, when the 360 averages around 4,000 hardware sales here in typical weeks - had nothing to do with first-party output and everything to do with Japanese gamers' insatiable appetite for Namco Bandai's Tales RPGs.

Evidently more than 108,000 people picked up copies of Tales of Vesperia, and almost a quarter of them seem to have bought new Xbox 360 machines just for the privilege of playing this Xbox-exclusive title. To a point, it's encouraging news for Microsoft Japan. The user base has increased again slightly -- which is good -- but the total number of 360 owners in Japan is still only hovering around the 625,000 mark, which is roughly one-tenth the size of Nintendo's Japanese Wii user base and about a quarter the size of PS3's.

If there were game-driven "blips" like this one every week of the year, well, they wouldn't be blips, and the 360's performance would be something for Sony and Nintendo to take seriously as competition in their own back garden. Realistically, even Microsoft would struggle to arrange things in Japan so that 52 locally appealing games could be released every year. But if it could manage to secure just half that number of games (and we're talking games that will definitely appeal to significant numbers of Japanese players, remember), the effects would inevitably be remarkable.

You could argue that Sony is enjoying greater success with the PS3 even though it doesn't have such volumes of appealing software, but don't underestimate the pull of Japanese consumers' brand loyalty and their desire for a cheapish Blu-Ray player. These things do make a difference.

Without more sales-driving games -- particularly new entries in highly regarded Japanese series, and the more exclusives the better -- Xbox 360 in Japan will never be able to maintain a respectable level of performance at retail. With that in mind, here's my five-step plan for an about-turn in the 360's fortunes in Japan. Some of my suggestions are bleedingly obvious, perhaps, but if they're that apparent, why hasn't Microsoft Japan already acted on them, eh? Sensui-san, if you're listening, please read on...